ortunate prelate just dead; but brought {452}
the accomplices of his crimes to a sense of their guilt, and imposed on
them a suitable penance. This was his last undertaking for the church,
God being pleased soon after to call him to eternal rest, and to the
crown of his labors. Old age and the fatigues of his journey did not
make him lay aside his accustomed mortifications, by which he
consummated his holocaust. In his return towards Rome, he was stopped by
a fever in the monastery of our Lady without the gates of Faenza, and
died there on the eighth day of his sickness, while the monks were
reciting matins round about him. He passed from that employment which
had been the delight of his heart on earth, to sing the same praises of
God in eternal glory, on the 22d of February, 1072, being fourscore and
three years old. He is honored as patron at Faenza and Font-Avellano, on
the 23d of the same month.

Footnotes:
1. Opusc. 20, c. 7.
2. Ib. 22.
3. Ib. 29, Nat. Alex. Theo Dogm. l. 2, c. 8, reg. 8.
4. Opusc. 12.
5. The works of St. Peter Damien, printed in three volumes, at Lyons,
in 1623, consist of one hundred and fifty-eight letters, fifteen
sermons, five lives of saints, namely, of St. Odilo, abbot of Cluni;
St. Maurus, bishop of Cesene; St. Romuald; St. Ralph, bishop of
Gubio; and St. Dominick Luricatus, and SS. Lucillia and Flora. The
third volume contains sixty small tracts, with several prayers and
hymns.

ST. BOISIL, PRIOR OF MAILROSS, OR MELROSS, C.

THE famous abbey of Mailross, which in later ages embraced the
Cistercian rule, originally followed that of St. Columba. It was
situated upon the river Tweed, in a great forest, and in the seventh
century was comprised in the kingdom of the English Saxons in
Northumberland, which was extended in the eastern part of Scotland as
high as the Frith. Saint Boisil was prior of this house under the holy
abbot Eata, who seem to have been both English youths, trained up in
monastic discipline by St. Aidan. Boisil was, says Bede, a man of
sublime virtues, and endued with a prophetic spirit. His eminent
sanctity determined St. Cuthbert to repair rather to Mailross than to
Lindisfarne in his youth, and he received from this saint the knowledge
of the holy scriptures, and the example of all virtues. St. Boisil had
often in his mouth the holy names of the adorable Trinity, and of our
divine Redeemer Jesus, which he repeated with a wonderful sentime